According to Babelfish:
United States of America = Beautiful Advantage Firm Gathers Audiences Country
US = Beautiful Country
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Anonymous2007-11-09 20:16
Just for shits and giggles:
Canada = Canada Takes Big
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland = Big No Row Summit and North Love You Blue Association Gathers the Kingdom
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Anonymous2007-11-09 20:37
ying1 guo2 (england) means something like country of the brave. de2 guo2 (germany) is in turn literally country of virtue, morality, and fa3 guo2 (france) is the country of law.
xiong1 ya2 li4 (hungary) is a lot more sophisticated. it's a combination of hairy savage barbarians, teeth, and strength. well, that's hungary.
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Anonymous2007-11-09 23:48
In Japanese, the US are refered to as 米国 (beikoku) which literally means "rice country", ironically.
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Anonymous2007-11-10 18:36
... why is that ironic?
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Anonymous2007-11-10 19:05
In Chinese, US is beautiful country (mei guo). Canada is "jia na da" and doesn't really means anything, the characters used in it (plus, the verb use, big) are only used due to the similarity of their sound with the original name.
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Anonymous2007-11-11 0:45
Uh, the U.S. in Japanese is 美國. That's literally "Beautiful Country"
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Anonymous2007-11-11 5:19
>>8
In Japanese, the U.S. is either 米国, アメリカ, or アメリカ合衆国（がっしゅうこく）.
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Anonymous2007-11-11 7:47
>>6
because japanese consume infinitely more rice than the average american, yet they call america "country of rice", that's why.
Why can't other countries be like us and just call other countries by their actual names? You know, except for calling Deutchland Germany, Italia Italy, and refering to Nihon as a mispronunciation of something Dutch sailors heard Chinese people calling it.
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Anonymous2007-11-18 17:30
>>13
Or calling "Zhong guo" China, or calling "Hango" Korea, or calling "Beijing" Peking, etc.
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Anonymous2007-11-18 17:44
>>14
And Sepsiszentgyörgy Sepsiszentgyörgy! Wow, I'm starting to like it! :)
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Anonymous2007-11-23 14:42
Bump
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Anonymous2007-11-23 18:45
>>14
Or calling "Hellas" Greece, or calling "Kerkyra" Corfu...
In Chinese America does mean "beautiful country," but it's not beautiful in the sense of pretty or sexy. The character is a sheep over the symbol of big, which means "beautiful" in the sense of "a big fat sheep that's ready for shearing, eating, or fucking."
Seriously. That's what it means.
So it's like, "America, the Hot Slut Country." Which seems accurate to me.
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Anonymous2007-11-30 2:20
美国 is America in Chinese. It was chosen for it's sound: 美 is "mei" which sounds like the "me" in "America." They couldn't use the "A" sound because 亜 is the "A" in "America," but 亜 was already taken as the prefix for "Asia."
The character 美 means "beautiful" as in "beautiful view of nature" or "beautiful woman." >>22 is full of shit except for the fact that it is composed of those two parts.